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The case for the decentralization of online forums

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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#101

Post by [deleted] »

nordsieck wrote: post #98
waboremo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we get to actual solutions: public funding. But it's something a lot of people don't want to admit. We skirt around the issue, this relies on donations, that relies on the goodwill of the owner, all of it to ignore the fact that what we really want is public funding for crucial software such as forums/social networks (and hosting them).

> what we really want is public funding for crucial software such as forums/social networks (and hosting them). Maybe some people want that. Your "we" is putting in a lot of work.

[deleted]

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#102

Post by jjav »

hayst4ck wrote: post #71
rsync wrote: post #17

We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…

Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. A billionaire is choosing to be a responsible owner/patron of this platform, but ultimately this platform answers to him. HN is a "good king" platform, our king has invested in public works that we benefit from and we appreciate it. Hacker news is good insofar as it accomplishes our kings goals which align with our own, but we still have a king, even i…

> Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire.

It doesn't take a billionaire, even if it happens to be the case.

It would be fascinating if they wished to publish the operating costs, but even without that, IIRC the hardware was quite minimal.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#103

Post by jjav »

edgyquant wrote: post #53
rsync wrote: post #17

We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…

Hacker News is in the same camp as any of the big platforms-it’s entirely subsidized by a billionaire VC or it would not exist the way it does.

> Hacker News is in the same camp as any of the big platforms-it’s entirely subsidized by a billionaire VC or it would not exist the way it does.

Do you know the operating costs of HN? How can you judge it takes a billionaire to subsidize it?

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#104

Post by jjav »

ilyt wrote: post #82
rsync wrote: post #17

We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…

Well, there are fundamentally 2 problems here: * someone needs to pay for it * whoever is doing and managing that can turn bad and want more. How do you solve that to be immune to the reddit/stackoverflow disruption ? Even if it could be covered by donations it there is still problem of any inevitable management of it deciding to push it in direction different than community wishes. > We are holding this discussion o…

> someone needs to pay for it

This is centralized thinking. In a decentralized open protocol system, everyone pays for their own way, but it's very cheap at an individual level. There's no central "it".

> Not web 1.0. Usenet and mailing lists(mostly) died for that, as did many "traditional" forums.

I'm on several email groups where I've been a participant since the very early 90s. Every so often there's the "oh have you seen this new shiny thing, let's move to that!"

Every single one of those new shinies have disappeared, but the email group lives on.

Why? Because email is 100% decentralized, nobody owns it, there's nothing to own. It's an open protocol. So it lives on forever.

Also, I still read Usenet on most days, just like I've been doing since the late 80s. It's alive (if not very active) because nobody owns it.

I wish we could collectively learn these lessons. Centralized systems cannot exist for very long.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#105

Post by justinlloyd »

robinsonb5 wrote: post #81
hayst4ck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and very few people actually want to pay for it. I think this is a core assumption that I'm not sure I believe in. Works for the public deserve public (distinct from government) funding. There are many things that say "if you don't give us money, we can't continue to exist." "We need enough money to function" is a completely different sell than "we want to 1000x our investors investments." Reddit's enshitification[…

> "We need enough money to function" is a completely different sell than "we want to 1000x our investors investments." It's almost as though the large-scale abandonment of old-skool small-scale, independent domain-specific web forums in favour of huge centralised platforms was a mistake... (Just out of interest, can anyone give me an idea of the typical running costs of, say, a phpBB or vBulletin web forum with a cou…

I don't know what the lower bound is, but a specific answer is "$97.67 per month" which is what I pay for a server in a rack in a data center that has been chugging along, with an occasional drive failure, for the past 15 years that hosts a forum, a bunch of low traffic websites, and an email server.

I also run a BBS on a Raspberry Pi that plays host to a few hundred DAU, that engage in chat, forums, a MUCK, and the occasional file transfer which runs on my home internet connection.

I am sure someone will jump right in and tell me that I am doing it wrong and I can host everything on an AWS micro VPS for $4/month, but the amount that I pay is for my server. I also suspect someone will jump right in and tell me I am not allowed to host a server on my home internet connection.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#106

Post by jjav »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #38
Miraste wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with them, but reddit's size lets it gather a lot of extremely specific knowledge that, were all subreddits separate forums, would be lost. Sure, many of these communities are strong enough to run their own infrastructure, but more of them are not.

Before Reddit, almost immediately before, that's what Usenet was for. Google kind of ruined it by hijacking it with Groups, then Reddit took over. Weed need a decentralized equivalent to Usenet.

> Weed need a decentralized equivalent to Usenet.

That is ... Usenet. That's exactly what Usenet is (not was, because it's still there, even if not many people use it. I still read it on many days.)

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#107

Post by edgyquant »

jjav wrote: post #103
edgyquant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is in the same camp as any of the big platforms-it’s entirely subsidized by a billionaire VC or it would not exist the way it does.

> Hacker News is in the same camp as any of the big platforms-it’s entirely subsidized by a billionaire VC or it would not exist the way it does. Do you know the operating costs of HN? How can you judge it takes a billionaire to subsidize it?

It’s literally a pet project of Paul Graham, a billionaire. That was my point.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#108

Post by jjav »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #62
janoc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usenet was literally decentralized before this was even a buzzword.

You're right. When I think of 'decentralized', and what I meant, was something offering anonymity and resistance to takedown orders, which are things it didn't have real protection against.

> what I meant, was something offering anonymity and resistance to takedown orders, which are things it didn't have real protection against.

Who would you issue a takedown order on a Usenet post? Remember it's peer to peer distribution. There is no central repository.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#109

Post by joker99 »

In all of this I'm wondering: why not apply the Wikipedia model to reddit? Create a foundation that employs a couple of people, that host and develop the site. Keep the volunteer mods, but lay down some guidelines for moderation. Fund it like Wikipedia is funded, like lots of submissions on HN have shown in the past, Wikipedia is swimming in money. Not everything needs to be for profit... Decentralized funding combined with centralized non profit operation would seem like a non perfect but very workable solution to this problem

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#110

Post by shagie »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #100
shagie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymity isn't necessary desirable for the people running the servers - it means extra work for people attempting to moderate the content on their instance. There are numerous other discussions about why a lack of moderation is often a bad thing for people running the servers. Take down orders are resisted by having it sufficiently decentralized. It may be possible to take down one server, but taking down every serv…

Anonymity is key in the sense that it shouldn't require linking to a real life identity. The same way now I can sign up for reddit 'anonymously' for example. There should be some reputation, some kind of check the person is human, maybe other things, but there needs to be the freedom to post separate from a real life persona, without fear of being doxxed. For so many different reasons. Usenet, I think, has a strong h…

> Usenet, I think, has a strong hierarchy structure rather than just being a 'web', although it is that as well. So if the takedown order is directed at a server in high enough position, it is essentially removes it from all of Usenet - and it's not just takedown orders, but actors with the ability to remove content unilaterally.

There were some sites that had bigger pipes and more tolerance for storage requirements than others, and it was thus easier to peer to one of those big ones to route posts that would get out everywhere else faster - but there wasn't any hierarchy as such.

The hierarchy of unset was in the naming - not the organization of how things were routed nor for a "who controls that." There is no lumber cartel forcing spammers to print out things and buy paper.

However, if a site misbehaves often enough it gets shunned sufficiently through per user kill files and admins not accepting posts that originated or passed through some server.

If you were to take down a big server that lots of people routed through, they'd route around it or another would take its place. Taking down The Pirate Bay didn't stop bit torrent.

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